Scientists compose cat calming music

Listen to the meow-sic! Scientists create 'Bach for CATS' with music that mimics their purr
and the sound of kittens suckling

• Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison composed tunes for cats
• They used rhythms that mimicked noise of purring cats or suckling kittens
• Tests showed the cats preferred the new tunes to classical music like Bach
• The researchers say species specific music can be used to calm animals
• They say pet owners could use cat music to help keep their animals happy

Most people will have heard music that sounds a bit like cats fighting - but it turns out that is not far from the kind music our
feline pets actually enjoy.

Scientists have created what they say is the first species-specific music for domestic cats by replicating some of the sounds the
animals produce themselves.

They say the music could provide new ways for cat owners to enrich the environments that their pets live in while also helping to
calm agitated animals.

The cat music has been created by psychologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and musicians at the University of Maryland.

The music uses rhythms that mimics the pulsating of a cat's purr along with melodies that were similar to their high pitched meows.
In tests against classical human music by composers Johann Sebastian Bach and Gabriel Faure, the cats showed stronger reactions to the feline tunes.
Just like in humans, however, the younger the cat was, the more excited it got about the music - with middle aged cats seeming the least interested.

Professor Charles Snowdon, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told MailOnline: 'Lots of people think their pets like
the same music they like and some laboratories require the playing of music as "enrichment". But we have little understanding of what pets actually like.
We looked at the natural sounds that cats make and their voices are an octave higher than a high human voice. They also have lots of sliding frequencies in
their calls which are rare in human music.'

Together with David Teie, a musician and composer at the University of Maryland, Professor Snowdon, studied the noises that cats make naturally
to create their music. Rather than imitating the noise that cats make, the researchers instead used them as inspiration to create new music. The idea was to produce
something that would be enjoyable for cats yet also not be unpleasant to human ears either. They created one piece called Cozmo's Air with a pulse running through
it that matched the sound of purring with a rhythm of 1380 beats per minute. Another track, called Rusty's Ballad, used a rhythm of 250 beats per minute to mimic
the rate of suckling by kittens.

The researchers, whose study is published in the journal of Applied Animal Behaviour Science, avoided using some of the highest frequency noises
found in cats howls as they are often related to fear and threat. Instead they used sounds that slid from one frequency to another at the lower range of cat
vocalisations. The resulting music sounds a little like cats yowling or someone learning to play a violin with an underlying purr beneath the melody.

They tested the music on 47 domestic cats, both male and female. They were played three minutes segments of either a cat composition and human
music that alternates between two speakers. The researchers chose Faure's Elegie, which has a pulse rate similar to the human resting heart beat of 66 beats per
minute and uses some sliding frequencies, and Bach's Air on a G String, which has a pulse rate of 56 beats per minute. They found that the cats approached and
rubbed themselves on the speakers producing the music written for felines far more often than those producing the human music. The cats were also quicker to respond
to the feline-specific music.

Professor Snowdon said that their study showed music cat owners find relaxing would not necessarily produce the same effect in their pets.
He said: 'Basically, human music is not very interesting to cats. We think that cat music will be more interesting and calming for cats than random human music,
which most of us use now. It could also be of value in animal shelters where more attention has been paid to helping dogs so far than to cats.'